Most economies experience episodes of persistent real exchange rate appreciations, when the question arises whether there is a need for intervention to protect the export sector. This paper presents a model of irreversible destruction where exchange rate intervention may be justified if the...

We argue that one reason why emerging economies borrow short term is that it is cheaper than borrowing long term. This is especially the case during crises, as in these episodes the relative cost of long-term borrowing increases. We construct a unique database of sovereign bond prices, returns,...

We explore empirically models of aggregate fluctuations in which consumers form anticipations about the future based on noisy sources of information and these anticipations affect output in the short run. Our objective is to separate fluctuations due to changes in fundamentals (news) from those...

Prices aggregate the information in the economy by sending signals about the scarcity of the goods traded. However prices can be expressed in terms of different units of account. Does the choice of the unit of account matter for informational efficiency? I develop a model where the choice of...

We develop a model of investment with financial constraints and use it to investigate the relation between investment and Tobin's q. A firm is financed partly by insiders, who control its assets, and partly by outside investors. When their wealth is scarce, insiders earn a rate of return higher...

We argue that emerging economies borrow short term due to the high risk premium charged by international capital markets on long-term debt. First, we present a model where the debt maturity structure is the outcome of a risk sharing problem between the government and bondholders. By issuing...

We characterize an environment in which agents have private information and trade in decentralized markets. First, we show that all the useful information is learned in the long run. Second, we show that agents with private information receive rents, and the value of information is positive....

This paper studies the welfare properties of competitive equilibria in an economy with financial frictions hit by aggregate shocks. In particular, it shows that competitive financial contracts can result in excessive borrowing ex ante and excessive volatility ex post. Even though from a...